It was that little excursion with Mr. Gordon that puts me up to sendin'
over to Williamsburg after Swifty Joe Gallagher, and signin' him as my
first assistant. Thinks I; if I'm liable to go strollin' off like that
any more, I've got to have someone that'll keep the joint open while I'm
gone. I didn't pick Swifty for his looks, nor for his mammoth intellect.
But he's as straight as a string, and he'll mind like a setter dog.
Well, say, it was lucky I got him just as I did. I hadn't much more'n
broke him in before I runs up against this new one. Understand, I ain't
no fad chaser. I don't pine for the sporting-extra life, with a new
red-ink stunt for every leaf on the calendar-pad. I got me studio here,
an' me real-money reg'lars that keeps the shop runnin', and a few of the
boys to drop around now and then; so I'm willing to let it go at that.
Course, though, I ain't no side-stepper. I takes what's comin' an' tries
to look pleasant.
But this little hot-foot act with Rajah and Pinckney had me dizzy for a
few rounds, sure as ever. And I wouldn't thought it of Pinckney. Why,
when he first shows up here I says to myself: "Next floor, Reginald,
for the manicure." He was one of that kind: slim, white-livered,
feather-weight style of chap--looked like he'd been trainin' on Welch
rabbits and Egyptian cigarettes at the club for about a year.
"Is this Professor McCabe?" says he.
"You win," says I. "What'll it be? Me class in crochet ain't begun yet."
He kind of looked me over steady like, and then he passes out a card
which says as how he was Lionel Pinckney Ogden Bruce.
"Do I have my choice?" says I. "Cause if I do I nips onto Pinckney--it's
cute. Well, Pinckney, what's doing?"
He drapes himself on a chair, gets his little silver-headed stick
balanced just so between his knees, pulls his trousers up to high-water
mark, and takes an inventory of me from the mat up. And say! when he got
through I felt as though he knew it all, from how much I'd weigh in at
to where I had my laundry done. Yes, Pinckney had a full set of eyes.
They were black; not just ordinary black, same's a hole in a hat, but
shiny an' sparklin', like patent leathers in the sun. If it hadn't been
for them eyes you might have thought he was one of the eight-day kind
that was just about to run down. I ought to have got next to Pinckney's
model, just by his lamps; but I didn't. I'm learnin', though, and if I
last long enough I'll be a wise guy some day.
Well, when Pinckney finishes his census of me he says: "Professor, I
wish to take a private course, or whatever you call it. I would like to
engage your exclusive services for about three weeks."
"Chic, chic!" says I. "Things like that come high, young man."
Pinckney digs up a sweet little check-book, unlimbers a fountain-pen,
and asks: "How much, please?"
"Seein' as this is the slack season with me, I'll make it fifty per,"
says I.
"Hour or day?" says he.
Maybe I was breathin' a bit hard, but I says careless like: "Oh, call it
fifty a day and expenses."
Business with the pen. "That's for the first week," says Pinckney, and I
see he'd reckoned in Sunday and all.
"When can you come on?" says I.
"I'll begin now, if you don't mind," says he.
Then it was up to me; so I goes to work. Inside of ten minutes I had a
fair notion of how Pinckney was put up. He wasn't as skimpy as he'd
looked from the outside, but I saw that it wouldn't be safe to try the
mitts: I might forget and put a little steam into the punch--then it
would be a case of sweepin' up the pieces.
"Hold that out," says I, chuckin' him the shot-bag.
He put it out; but all there was in him was bracin' that arm.
"What you need," says I, "is a little easy track-work in the open,
plenty of cold water before breakfast, and sleep in ten-hour doses."
"I couldn't sleep five hours at a stretch, much less ten," says he.
"We'll take something for that," says I.
We gets together a couple suits of running-togs, sweaters, towels and
things, and goes downstairs where Pinckney has a big plum-colored
homicide wagon waitin' for him.
"Tell Goggles to point for Jerome-ave.," says I. "There's a track out
there we can use."
On the way up Pinckney lets loose a hint or two that gives me an outline
map of his particular case. He hadn't been hittin' up any real paresis
pace, so far as I could make out. He'd just been trying to keep even
with the coupons and dividends that the old man had left him, burnin' it
as it came in, and he'd run out of matches. Guess there was a bunch of
millinery somewhere in the background too, for he was anxious about how
he'd feel around Horse-Show time. Maybe Pinckney had made his plans to
be more or less agreeable about then; but when he got a kinetoscope
picture of himself in a sanitarium he had a scare thrown into him. Next
some one gives him a tip on the Physical Culture Studio and he pikes for
Shorty McCabe.
Well, I've trained a good many kinds, but I'd never tried to pump red
corpuscles into an amateur Romeo before. There was the three-fifty,
though, and I sails in.
"Head up now, elbows in, weight on your toes, an' we're off in a bunch!"
says I. "Steady there, take it easy! This ain't no hundred-yard sprint;
this is a mile performance. There, that's better! Dog-trot it to the
three-quarters, and if your cork ain't pulled by then you can spurt
under the wire."
But Pinckney had lost all his ambition before we'd got half round. At
the finish he was breathin' more air than his wind-tanks had known in
months.
"Now for the second lap," says I.
"What? Around that fence again?" says Pinckney. "Why, I saw all there
was to see last time. Can't we try a new one?"
"Do you think mile tracks come in clusters?" says I.
"Why not just run up the road?" asks Pinckney.
"The road it is," says I.
We fixed it up that Goggles was to follow along with the goose-cart and
honk-honk the quarters to us as he read 'em on his speed-clock. We were
three miles nearer Albany when we quit, and Pinckney was leakin' like a
squeezed sponge.
"Throw her wide open and pull up at the nearest road-house," says I to
Goggles.
He found one before I'd got all the wraps on Pinckney, and in no time at
all we were under the shower. There was less of that marble-slab look
about Pinckney when he began to harness up again. He thought he could
eat a little something, too. I stood over the block while the man cut
that three-inch hunk from the top of the round, and then I made a mortal
enemy of the cook by jugglin' the broiler myself. But Pinckney did more
than nibble. After that he wanted to turn in. Sleep? I had to lift him
out at four G. M. The water-cure woke him, though. He tried to beg off
on the last few glasses, but I made him down 'em. Then we starts towards
Boston, Goggles behind, and Pinckney discovers the first sunrise he's
seen for years.
Well, that's the way we went perambulatin' up into the pie-belt. First
we'd jog a few miles, then hop aboard the whiz-wagon and spurt for
running water. We didn't travel on any schedule or try to make any
dates. Half the time we didn't know where we were, and didn't care.
When bath-tubs got scarce we'd hunt for a pond or a creek in the woods.
In one of the side-hampers on the car I found a quick-lunch outfit, so I
gets me a broiler, lays in round steak and rye bread, and twice a day I
does the hobo act over a roadside fire. That tickled Pinckney to death.
Nights we'd strike any place where they had beds to let. Pinckney didn't
punch the mattress or turn up his nose at the quilt patterns. When it
came dark he was glad enough to crawl anywhere.
Now this was all to the good. Never saw quite so much picnic weather
rattled out of the box all at one throw. And the work didn't break your
back. Why, it was like bein' laid off for a vacation on double
pay--until Rajah butted in and began to mix things.
We'd pulled into some little town or other up in Connecticut soon after
sun-up, lookin' for soft boiled eggs, when a couple of real gents in
last-year ulsters pipes us off and saunters up to the car. They spots
Pinckney for the cash-carrier and makes the play at him.
It was a hard-luck symposium, of course; but there was more to it than
just a panhandle touch. They were all there was left of the Imperial
Consolidated Circus and Roman Menagerie. They had lost their top and
benches in a fire, deputy-sheriffs had nabbed the wagons and horses, the
company was hoofing back to Broadway, and all they had left was Rajah.
Would the honorable gentleman come and take a squint at Rajah?
For why? Well, it was this way: They hated to do it, Rajah being an old
friend, just like one of the family, you might say, but there wasn't
anything else. They'd just got to hock Rajah to put the Imperial
Consolidated in commission again. The worst of it was, these here
villagers didn't appreciate what gilt-edged security Rajah was. But his
honor would see that the two-fifty was nothing at all to lend out for a
beggarly week or so on such a magnificent specimen. Why, Rajah was as
good as real estate or Government bonds. As for selling him, ten
thousand wouldn't be a temptation. Would the gentlemen just step around
to the stable?
It was then I began to put up the odds on Pinckney. I got a wink from
them black eyes of his, and there was the very divil an' all in 'em,
with his face as straight as a crowbar.
"Certainly," says he, "we'll be happy to meet Rajah."
They had him moored to one of the floor-beams with an ox-chain around
his nigh hind foot. He wasn't as big as all out doors, nor he wasn't any
vest-pocket edition either. As elephants go, he wouldn't have made the
welter-weight class by about a ton. He was what I'd call just a handy
size, about two bureaus high by one wide. His iv'ry stoop rails had been
sawed off close to his jaw, so he didn't look any more wicked than a
foldin'-bed. And his eyes didn't have that shifty wait-till-I-get-loose
look they generally does. They were kind of soft, widowy,
oh-me-poor-child eyes.
"He is sad, very sad, about all this," says one of the real gents.
"Know? Rajah knows almost as much as we do, sir."
Pinckney took his word for it. "I think I shall accommodate you with
that loan," says he. "Come into the hotel."
Say, I didn't think you could gold-brick Pinckney as easy as that. One
of the guys wrote out a receipt and Pinckney shoved it into his pocket
handin' over a wad of yellow-backs. They didn't lose any time about
headin' southeast, those two in the ulsterets. Then we goes back to have
another look at Rajah.
"It's a wonderful thing, professor, this pride of possession," says
Pinckney. "Only a few persons in the world own elephants. I am one of
them. Even though it is only for a week, and he is miles away, I shall
feel that I own Rajah, and it will make me glad."
Then he winks, so I knows he's just bein' gay. But Rajah didn't seem so
gladsome. He was rockin' his head back and forth, and just as we gets
there out rolls a big tear, about a tumblerful.
"Can't we do something to chirk him up a bit?" says I. "He seems to take
it hard, being hung up on a ticket."
"There's something the matter with this elephant," says Pinckney, taking
a front view of him. "He's in pain. See if you can't find a veterinary,
professor."
Yes, they said there was a horse-doctor knockin' around the country
somewhere. He worked in the shingle-mill by spells, and then again in
the chair-factory, or did odd jobs. A blond-haired native turned up who
was sure the Doc had gone hog-killin' up to the corners. So I goes back
to the stable.
"I've found out," says Pinckney. "It's toothache. He showed me. Open up,
Rajah, and let the professor see. Up, up!"
Rajah was accommodatin'. He unhinged the top half of his face to give me
a private view. We used a box of matches locating that punky grinder.
There was a hole in it big enough to drop a pool-ball into. Talk about
your chamber of horrors! Think what it must be to be as big as that and
feel bad all over.
"I never worked in an open-all-night painless shop," says I, "but I
think I could do something for that if I could tap a drug store."
"Good," says Pinckney. "We passed one down the road."
They kept grindstones and stove-polish and dress-patterns there too, but
they had a row of bottles in one corner.
"Gimme a roll of cotton-battin' an' a quart of oil of cloves," says I to
the man.
He grinned and ripped a little ten-cent bottle of toothache drops off a
card. "It may feel that way, but you'll find this plenty," says he.
"You get busy with my order," says I. "This ain't my ache, it's Rajah's,
and Rajah's an elephant."
"Sho!" says he, and hands over all he had in stock. I went back on the
jump. We made a wad half as big as your head, soaked it in the clove oil
and rammed it down with a nail-hammer. It was the _fromage_, all right.
And say! Ever see an elephant grin and look tickled and try to say thank
you? The way he talked deaf and dumb with his trunk and shook hands with
us and patted us on the back was almost as human as the way a man acts
when the jury brings in "Not guilty." Inside of three minutes Rajah was
that kinky he tried to do a double-shuffle and nearly wrecked the barn.
It made us feel good too, and we stood around there and threw bouquets
at ourselves for what we'd done.
Then the cook came out and wanted to know should she keep right on
boiling them eggs or take 'em off; so we remembers about breakfast.
Callin' for a new deal on the eggs, we sent out word for 'em to fix up a
tub of hot mash for Rajah and told the landlord to give our friend the
best in the stable.
Rajah was fetchin' the bottom of the tub when we went out to say
good-by. He stretched his trunk out after us as we went through the
door. We'd climbed into the car and was just gettin' under way when we
hears things smash, and looks back to see Rajah, with a section of the
stable floor draggin' behind, coming after us on the gallop.
"Beat it!" says I to Goggles, and he was reachin' for the speed lever,
when he sees a town constable, with a tin badge like a stove-lid, pull a
brass watch on us.
"What's the limit?" shouts Pinckney.
"Ten an hour or ten dollars," says he.
"Here's your ten and costs," says Pinckney, tossing him a sawbuck. "Go
ahead, Francois."
We jumped into that village ordinance at a forty-mile an hour clip and
would have had Rajah hull down in about two minutes, but Pinckney had
to take one last look. The poor old mutt had quit after a few jumps. He
had squat in the middle of the road, lifted up his trombone frontispiece
and was bellowin' out his grief like a calf that has lost its mommer.
Pinckney couldn't stand for that for a minute.
"I say now, we'll have to go back," says he. "That wail would haunt me
for days if I didn't."
So back we goes to Rajah, and he almost stands on his head, he's so glad
to see us again.
"We'll just have to slip away without his knowing it next time," says
Pinckney. "Perhaps he will get over his gratitude in an hour or so."
We unhitches Rajah from the stable floor and starts back for the hotel.
The landlord met us half-way.
"Don't you bring that critter near my place ag'in!" shouts he. "Take him
away before he tears the house down."
An' no jollyin' nor green money would change that hayseed's mind. The
whole population was with him too. While we were jawin' about it, along
comes the town marshal with some kind of injunction warnin' us to remove
Rajah, the same bein' a menace to life and property.
There wa'n't nothing for it but to sneak. We moves out of that burg at
half speed, with old Rajah paddin' close behind, his trunk restin'
affectionately on the tonneau-back and a kind of satisfied right-to-home
look in them little eyes of his. Made me feel like a pair of yellow
shoes at a dance, but Pinckney seemed to think there was something funny
about it. "'And over the hills and far away the happy Princess followed
him,' as Tennyson puts it," says he.
"Tennyson was dead onto his job," says I. "But when do we annex the
steam calliope and the boys in red coats with banners? We ought to have
the rest of the grand forenoon parade, or else shake Rajah."
"Oh, perhaps we can find quarters for him in the next town, where he
hasn't disgraced himself," says Pinckney.
Pinckney hadn't counted on the telephone, though. A posse with shot-guns
and bench-warrants met us a mile out from the next place and shooed us
away. They'd heard that Rajah was a man-killer and they had brought
along a pound of arsenic to feed him. After they'd been coaxed from
behind their barricade, though, and had seen what a gentle, confidin'
beast Rajah really was, they compromised by letting us take a road that
led into the next county.
"This is gettin' sultry," says I as we goes on the side-track.
"I am enjoying it," says Pinckney. "Now let's have some road work."
Say, you ought to have seen that procession. First comes me and
Pinckney, in running gear; then Rajah, hoofing along at our heels, as
joyous as a chowder party; and after him Goggles, with the benzine
wagon. Seems to me I've heard yarns about how grateful dumb beasts could
be to folks that had done 'em a good turn, but Rajah's act made them
tales seem like sarsaparilla ads. He was chock full of gratitude. He was
nutty over it. Seemed like he couldn't think of anything else but that
wholesale toothache of his and how he'd got shut of it. He just adopted
us on the spot. Whenever we stopped he'd hang around and look us over,
kind of admirin', and we couldn't move a step but he was there, flappin'
his big ears and swingin' his trunk, just as though he was sayin':
"Whoope-e-e, me fellers! You're the real persimmons, you are."
We couldn't find a hotel where they'd take us in that night, so we had
to bribe a farmer to let us use his spare bed rooms. We tethered Rajah
to a big apple-tree just under our windows to keep him quiet, and let
him browse on a Rose of Sharon bush. He only ripped off the rain pipe
and trod a flower-bed as hard as a paved court.
At breakfast Pinckney remarks, sort of soothin':
"We might as well enjoy Rajah's society while we have it. I suppose
those circus men will be after him in a few days."
Then he remembers that receipt and pulls it out. I could see something
was queer by the way he screwed up his mouth. He tosses the paper over
to me. Say! do you know what them two ulsteret guys had done? They'd
given Pinckney a bill of sale, makin' over all rights, privileges and
good-will entire.
"You're it," says I.
"So it seems," says Pinckney. "But I hardly know whether I've got Rajah
or Rajah's got me."
"If I owned something I didn't want," says I, "seems to me I'd sell it.
There must be other come-ons."
"We will sell him," says Pinckney.
Well, we tried. For three or four days we didn't do anything else; and
say, when I think of them days they seem like a mince-pie dream. We did
our handsomest to make those Nutmeggers believe that they needed Rajah
in their business, that he would be handy to have around the place. But
they couldn't see it. We argued with about fifty horny-handed
plow-pushers, showin' 'em how Rajah could pull more'n a string of oxen a
block long, and could be let out for stump-digging in summer, or as a
snow-plough in winter. We tried liverymen, storekeepers, summer
cottagers; but the nearest we came to making a sale was to a brewer
who'd just built a new house with red and yellow fancy woodwork all over
the front of it. He thought Rajah might do for a lawn ornament and make
himself useful as a fountain during dry spells, but when he noticed that
Rajah didn't have any tusks he said it was all off. He knew where he
could buy a whole cast-iron menagerie, with all the frills thrown in, at
half the price.
And we wa'n't holding Rajah at any swell figure. He was on the bargain
counter when the sale began. Every day was a fifty-per-cent. clearance
with us. We were closing out our line of elephants on account of
retiring from business, and Rajah was a remnant.
But they wouldn't buy. Generally they threatened to set the dogs on us.
It was worse than trying to sell a cargo of fur overcoats in Panama. In
time it began to leak through into our heads that Rajah wa'n't
negotiable. Didn't seem to trouble him any. He was just as glad to be
with us as at first, followed us around like a pet poodle, and got away
with his bale of hay as regular as a Rialto hamfatter raidin' the free
lunch.
"Is it a life sentence, Pinckney?" says I. "Is this twin foster-brother
act to a mislaid elephant to be a continuous performance? If it is we'd
better hit the circuit regular and draw our dough on salary day. For me,
I'm sick of havin' folks act like we was a quarantine station. Let's
anchor Rajah to something solid and skiddoo."
But Pinckney couldn't stand it to think of Rajah being left to suffer.
He was gettin' kind of sore on the business, just the same. Then he
plucks a thought. We wires to a friend of his in Newport to run down to
the big circus headquarters and jolly them into sending an
elephant-trainer up to us.
"A trainer will know how to coax Rajah off," says he, "and perhaps he
will take him as a gift."
"It's easy money," says I.
But it wasn't. That duck at Newport sends back a message that covers
four sheets of yellow paper, tellin' how glad he was to get track of
Pinckney again and how he must come down right away. Oh, they wanted
Pinckney bad! It was like the tap of the bell for a twenty-round go with
the referee missin'. Seems that Mrs. Jerry Toynbee was tryin' to pull
off one of those back-yard affairs that win newspaper space--some kind
of a fool amateur circus--and they'd got to have Pinckney there to
manage it or the thing would fush. As for the elephant-trainer, he'd
forgot that.
"By Jove!" says Pinckney, real sassy like.
"That's drawin' it mild," says I. "Would you like the loan of a few
able-bodied cuss-words?"
"But I have an idea," says Pinckney.
"Handcuff it," says I; "it's a case of breakin' and enterin'."
But he didn't have so much loft-room to let, after all. His first move
was to hunt up a railroad station and charter a box-car. We carpets it
with hay, has a man knock together a couple of high bunks in one end,
and throws in some new horse-blankets.
"Now," says Pinckney, "you and I and Rajah will start for Newport on the
night freight."
"Have you asked Rajah?" says I.
But Rajah knew all about riding in box-cars. He walked up the plank
after us just like we was a pair of Noahs. Goggles was sent off over the
road with the cart, all by his lonesome.
I've traveled a good deal with real sports, and once I came back from
St. Louis with the delegates to a national convention, but this was my
first trip in an animal car. It wasn't so bad, though, and it was all
over by daylight next morning. There wasn't anyone in sight but milkmen
and bakers' boys as we drove down Bellevue-ave., with Rajah grippin' the
rear axle of our cab. I don't know how he felt about buttin' into
Newport society at that time of day, but I looked for a cop to pinch us
as second-story men.
We fetches up at the swellest kind of a ranch you ever saw, iron gates
to it like a storage warehouse, and behind that trees and bushes and
lawn, like a slice out of Central Park. Pinckney wakes up the
lodge-keeper and after he lets down the bars we pikes around to the
stable. It looked more like an Episcopal church than a stable, and we
didn't find any horses inside, anyway, only seven different kinds of
gasoline carts. The stable-hands all seemed to know Pinckney and to be
proud of it, but they shied some at Rajah and me.
"This is part of a little affair I'm managing for Mrs. Toynbee," says
Pinckney. "Professor McCabe and Rajah will stay here for a day or two,
strictly _in cog._, you know."
What Pinckney says seemed to be rules and regulations there, so Rajah
and I got the glad hand after that. And for a stable visit it was the
best that ever happened. I've stopped at lots of two-dollar houses that
would have looked like Bowery lodgings alongside of that stable. And one
of the boys thought he could handle the mitts some. Yes, that _in cog._
business wasn't so worse, at fifty per.
All this time Pinckney was as busy as the man at the ticket window, only
droppin' in once or twice after dark to see if Rajah was stayin' good.
The show was being knocked into shape and Pinckney was master of
ceremonies. I knew he was goin' to work Rajah in somehow; but he didn't
have any time to put me next and I never tumbled until he'd sprung the
trick.
About the third day things began to hum around the Toynbee place. A gang
of tentmen came with a round top and put it up. They strung a lot of
side-show banners too, and built lemonade-stands in the shrubbery. If it
hadn't been for the Johnnie boys in hot clothes strollin' around you'd
thought a real one-ring wagon-show had struck town. But say, that bunch
of clowns and bum bareback riders had papas who could have given 'em a
Forepaugh outfit every birthday.
Early next morning I got the tip from Pinckney to sneak Rajah out of the
stable and over into the dressin'-tent. The way that old chap's eyes
glistened when he saw the banners and things was a wonder. He sure did
know a heap, that Rajah. He was as excited and anxious as a new chorus
girl at a fall opening; but when I gave him the word he held himself in.
Just before the grand entry I got a peek at the house, and it was a
swell mob: same folks that you'll see at the Horse Show, only there
wasn't no dollar-a-head push to rubber at 'em, as they wa'n't on
exhibition. They was just out for fun, and I guess they know how to have
it, seein' that's their steady job.
Number four on the programme was put down as: "Mr. Lionel Pinckney Ogden
Bruce, with his wonderfully life-like elephant Rajah." I heard the
barker givin' his song an' dance about the act, and he got a great hand.
Then Pinckney goes on and the crowd howls.
You see, he'd had a loose canvas suit, like pajamas, made for Rajah, and
stuffed out with straw. It was painted to look something like elephant
hide, but some of the straw had been left sticking through the seams.
With Rajah sewed inside of this, he looked like a rank imitation of
himself.
"Fake, fake!" they yells at 'em as they showed up. "Who's playing the
hind legs, Lionel?" and a lot of things like that. They threw peanuts
and apples at Rajah, and generally enjoyed themselves.
Then all of a sudden Pinckney pulls the puckering string, yanks off the
padding, and out walks old Rajah as chipper as Billy Jerome. Fetch 'em?
Well, say! You've seen a gang of school-kids when the sleight-of-hand
man makes a pass over the egg in the hat and pulls out a live rabbit?
These folks acted the same way. They howled, they hee-hawed, they
jumped up and down on the seats.
They'd been lookin' for the same old elephant with two men inside, the
good old chestnut that they'd been tryin' to laugh over for years, and
when this philopena was sprung on 'em they were as tickled as a baby
with a jack-in-the-box. It wouldn't have got more'n one laugh out of a
crowd of every-day folks, but that swell mob just went wild over it. It
was a new stunt, done special for them by one of their own crowd.
Was Pinckney it? Why, he was the whole show! They kept him and Rajah in
the ring for half an hour, and they let loose every time Rajah lifted
his trunk or napped his ears. When he got 'em quiet Pinckney made a
speech. He said he was happy to say that the grand door prize, as
announced on the hand-bills, had been drawn by Mrs. Jeremiah Toynbee,
and that Rajah was the prize. Would she take it with her, or have it
sent?
You've heard of Mrs. Jerry. She's a real sport, she is. She's the one
that stirred up all that fuss by takin' her tame panther down to
Bailey's Beach with her. And Mrs. Jerry wasn't goin' back on her
reputation or missin' any two-page ads. in the papers.
"You may send him, please," says Mrs. Jerry.
Maybe they thought that was all a part of Pinckney's fake. They didn't
know how hard we'd tried to unload Rajah. We didn't do any lingerin'
around. While the show was goin' on we sneaks out of the back of the
tent with Rajah and across to the stable. The rest was easy. He'd got so
used to seein' me there that I reckon he'd sized it up for my regular
hang-out, so when we ties him up fast and slides out easy, one at a
time, he never mistrusts.
"Professor," says Pinckney, "it seems to me that this is an excellent
opportunity for us to go away."
"It's all of that," says I, "and let's make it a quick shift."
We did. Goggles shook us up some on the way down, but we hit Broadway in
time for breakfast.